Kitchen Jam

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This is not a post about jam – at least, not a jam that you’d spread on biscuits or use to top a block of cream cheese as a fast appetizer.

Today’s jam is an improv on some of the leftovers from Christmas Eve dinner at my sister’s house. Pork loin with apple stuffing, homemade apple sauce, twice-baked potatoes and broccoli – a lot of broccoli. Needless to say, my leftovers care package included some protein and a healthy quantity of steamed green florets.

I am just one person. While I love broccoli, it mostly hates the digestive changes I’ve experienced because of cancer, surgeries and the resulting ostomy. I can eat broccoli when it’s heavily cooked (think 50s-era canned veggies) or pureed – which means that although whole broccoli is pretty much off my menu, broccoli soup in small quantities is still a favorite thing. The key is that I *must* limit my intake to small quantities – no more than three-quarters of a cup or so at once. It’s definitely not something I can have every day.

So, you ask, how did I end up with three cups of cooked broccoli? Maybe it’s my inability to say ‘no’ to something that can become a wonderful soup, one of the foods I like just as much as I enjoy jam!

On the bright side, broccoli freezes well – and even frozen cooked broccoli can become a fine soup in a hurry. So I froze about half of my ‘care’ package.

This recipe, which makes about two cups of soup, is how I jammed on the rest of the broccoli leftovers. It’s a proportional recipe; I could have doubled it and used all of the leftovers – but I had more room in the freezer for a bag of cooked broccoli than for the soup!

This recipe is a perfect example of why every home needs an immersion (aka hand, wand or stick) blender. You bring the blender to the soup, puree it in the pan, and have only the detachable wand portion to clean – my kind of implement! My own, a 200-watt Braun model, is celebrating its 8th year of continuous daily use in February, 2010 – and I’m already searching for a suitable replacement, just in case. Enjoy!

Easy Broccoli Cheese Soup

1 1/2 cup cooked broccoli florets
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 sliced mushrooms
3/4 cup stock or water
1/4 cup half and half
1/4 cup horseradish cheese spread (any type of cheese will do!)
dash of smoked ground chipotle chile powder (cayenne will also work)

• Melt the butter in a medium-sized, deep saucepan.
• Add in the cooked broccoli florets (break the florets into smaller pieces with a spoon if needed) and the sliced mushrooms. Sprinkle with the dash of ground hot chile or cayenne. Saute for 3-4 minutes until heated through.
• Stir in the stock. I used mushroom, which I had in the freezer. However, any stock or broth (vegetable, potato peel, garlic, chicken) will work. If you don’t have stock, plain old water will work, too. If you like a little wine in your soup (mmm!), substitute 1/4 cup of dry white wine for an equal amount of either stock or water.
• Bring the liquid to a boil, and then reduce the heat to a simmer. Using an immersion blender, puree the soup. If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can blend the soup in a blender which is loosely covered, and then return it to the saucepan.
• Stir in the half and half and the leftover horseradish cheese spread. If using a harder type of cheese, shred it before adding to the soup. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the cheese is melted.

Makes about 2 cups of broccoli-cheese soup.

Image by trekkyandy via Flickr

Cranberries have appeared several times in the Kitchen Jam cupboard – and they’ve already lent their holiday tang and color to two of the 12 jams of Christmas. But in selecting #12, the final jam of this series, I wanted to improv a simple riff on a wonderful recipe I discovered in Aimee’s Under the High Chair Virtual Jam Swap – a variation on Grapefruit Cranberry Marmalade which was submitted to the swap by Cheri of Kitchen Simplicity.

I’ve made Cheri’s original recipe – and it’s wonderful! But we’re for real at the wire now when it comes to holiday gifting; no time for the extra steps of zesting whole grapefruits and boiling the fruits for an hour to get them to the gel point. We (or at least I) need quick and easy. We need bottled juices that metamorphize into jam – and if they can be transformed into lower-sugar jam, even better!

I used Florida’s Natural brand 100% unsweetened ruby red grapefruit juice (the original version, not the one with added calcium.) This brand has no-added-anything. I also used some pureed (hello, food processor or blender) fresh cranberries. It’s a slightly different consistency than Cheri’s no-pectin, slow-cooked marmalade, but the clear and bright tastes are a beautifully rosy way to wake up a morning. Make sure to let your gift recipients know that this is an unprocessed jam that should be kept refrigerated and used quickly, or kept frozen for longer storage. Enjoy!

BTW, once again, no compensation was received from Florida’s Natural Brand for their mention in this blog. But hey, gang, if you’re interested in sponsoring me, by all means drop me an email – I have no problem accepting money from products I actually use.

Grapefruit-Cranberry Jam
3 1/2 cups refrigerated ruby red grapefruit juice
1 cup pureed fresh cranberries
3 cups sugar
1 box/package of low or no-sugar pectin
1 cup water

• Mix the sugar and the package of pectin thoroughly in a large saucepan.
• Stir in the cranberry puree and one cup of water, and mix thoroughly.
• Bring the mixture up to a boil on medium-high heat, stirring constantly.
• When the cranberry-sugar-pectin mixture reaches a boil that can’t be stirred down, boil for one minute. Remove from the heat.
• Add the grapefruit juice to the hot cranberry-sugar-pectin mixture. Stir for one minute until thoroughly mixed.
• Pour the mixture into prepared (sterilized, hot) jars or freezer containers, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.
• Allow to cool and set for 24 hours at room temperature. Check for gelling, label with a use-by date and store for up to three weeks in the refrigerator, or up to one year in the freezer.

Makes about 6 one-cup jars of jam.

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I’d love to say this recipe is all mine – it’s so simple, it took me more time to type it up than to make it. But I can’t take any credit for inventing it; I just followed directions.

This jelly comes straight out of the insert in the package of Ball (R) No-Sugar Needed Pectin. I didn’t even juice whole pomegranates (which is quite the process) to get the raw juice for this jelly; I used POM bottled juice from the grocery store. One bottle of unsweetened 100% pomegranate juice, some lemon juice, 3/4 cup of sugar per cup of juice, 1 box of low sugar pectin – mix, boil, pour into containers and serve, can or freeze. It really is that simple. Enjoy!

BTW – full disclosure – neither POM nor Ball nor Sure-Jell/Kraft Foods have contributed in any way to the sponsorship of this post or my blog. But hey, folks at POM, Ball and Kraft, I’m sure open to the idea. Call me, or drop me an email. When it comes to jamming, I can (sometimes) be bought!

Pomegranate Jelly
1 box Ball (R) low or no-sugar pectin
3 cups sugar
4 cups pomegranate juice (100% juice, unsweetened)
2 tablespoons lemon juice

• Prepare the jars (sterilize, and then keep hot in either a pan of hot water, your dishwasher after the hot rinse cycle, or your oven set at around 200 degrees F.
• In a large saucepot, combine pectin with pomegranate and lemon juices and bring to a full boil. This jelly foams up and the bubbling doubles its volume, so use a large pot even if the amount of juice in the pan seems very shallow.
• Add sugar and boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
• Remove from heat, and skim off the foam with large metal spoon.
• Pour the jam into hot sterilized jars, cover with lids and rings.
• Process jars in a hot-water bath for 5 minutes according to the directions for hot-water-bath canning from the USDA.

Makes 5-6 one-cup jars of jam.

Image by Windsors Child via Flickr

Chabear01 shared this recipe over at Recipeza’ar, based on a recipe she found in the November 1996 issue of Family Circle magazine. I didn’t change it much; I don’t put the peels through a food mill because straining the cider through a fine sieve is less work. The taste is the essence of autumn, the jam a beautiful orange-gold in the jar. It does take a lot of cooking time, but the payoff is worth it. Enjoy!

(Roasted) Apple-Pumpkin Butter
3 lbs McIntosh apples
2 ½ cups apple cider
1 ½ cups brown sugar
1 cinnamon stick about 5 inches long, or 1 ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 ¾ cups solid-pack canned pumpkin

• Peel and core apples. Save the peels and cores in a saucepan.
• Add 2 cups of the apple cider to the apple peels and cores in the saucepan.
• Bring to a boil over high heat; once the cider boils, reduce the heat to low. Cover the pan and simmer the peels in the cider for 30 minutes.
• While the peels simmer, combine the apples, brown sugar, cinnamon stick (or ground cinnamon) and the rest of the cider in a 4-6 qt. saucepan.
• Bring to a boil over medium heat. Once the apples are boiling, reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30-40 minutes or until the apples begin to fall apart.
• Drain the cider from the apple peels and add it to the cooking apples.
• Keep stirring, uncovered, 45-60 minutes or until the apple mixture is thick.
• Remove the cinnamon stick and discard. Stir in the pumpkin.
• Heat the oven to 300 degrees. Pour the apple-pumpkin mixture into a 9 x 13 or larger shallow roasting pan. With oven door slightly ajar, roast the apple-pumpkin puree, stirring every 15 minutes, for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until it’s thick enough to spread.
• Spoon into sterilized 1 cup canning jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace and wiping the jar rims clean.
• Top with hot lids and bands, and process in boiling water according to USDA directions for hot water bath canning: 5 minutes.
• Cool jars completely on wire rack; store them in a cool, dark place for up to 6 months.

Makes 6-8 one-cup jars.

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I love the impressiveness of Bananas Foster, flambe’d table-side to bring to a close a terrific meal. This jam is my attempt to put the gooey, caramel-rum-banana essence of Bananas Foster into a jar. As it turns out, Bananas Foster Jam is also one of the easiest gifts to make, and its taste is as impressive as the original. Simple, too – make it from readily available bananas, with no added pectin. The sugar and rum combine to carmelize and thicken the jam.

If you’re an Elvis fan, this is a great complement to peanut butter for a rock’n'roll style PBJ. If you want to extend the Bananas Foster taste, it’s also wonderful as a topping for a rich vanilla ice cream – maybe with a bit of real whipped cream on top.

Or you can eat it like I do, right out of the jar. Enjoy!

BANANAS FOSTER JAM
8-9 ripe but still firm bananas (about 3 cups, mashed)
½ cup lemon juice
2 cups white sugar
2 ½ cups dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ c. dark rum
¼ cup water (if needed)

• Mash the bananas, using a fork or pastry blender. Add in the lemon juice, and measure to be sure you have at least three cups of jam.
• Put the bananas into a 6qt. saucepot. With the banana mixture on the heat, stir in the sugars and cinnamon.
• Cook over medium heat, stirring every few minutes until the bananas are a thick puree – about 45 minutes.
• After 45 minutes, stir in the dark rum, and continue cooking for at least 15 more minutes to cook the alcohol out of the mixture.
• Remove from the heat and fill sterilized jars, leaving ¼ inch headspace. Adjust the caps.
• Process in a hot-water bath according to USDA directions: 15 minutes for one-cup (8 oz.) jars.

Makes 5-6 cups of jam.